George Furth

Actor, playwright and librettist who won a Tony for his work with Stephen Sondheim on the musical Company.

George Furth [left] and Syephen Sondheim in New York in November 1981Photo: AP

8:27PM BST 12 Aug 2008

George Furth , who died on Monday aged 75, was an actor and playwright who also collaborated with Stephen Sondheim.

The two men wrote three shows together. Two were failures, but the third – Company (1970) – won Tonys for best musical and for Furth's book, which was adapted from a play he himself had written.

Directed by Harold Prince, Company was an unconventional show which followed the fortunes of a New York bachelor and his inability to commit to a relationship. Sondheim's score included the songs Barcelona, Sorry-Grateful and The Ladies Who Lunch.

The show was to enjoy two revivals on Broadway, most recently in 2006. Less memorable were the other two collaborations between Sondheim and Furth. Merrily We Roll Along (1981), based on a play by Moss Hart and George S Kaufman, closed in two weeks, although Sondheim's score retains its fans and there have been versions staged in regional theatres and in London.

The third collaboration, Getting Away with Murder, was a comedy thriller which had a short run on Broadway in 1996.

Furth enjoyed a parallel career as a character actor, appearing frequently on both television and the big screen.

Perhaps his best-known film role was as Woodcock, the Union Pacific Railroad employee who twice resists the attempts of Paul Newman's character to rob a train in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He also played Charlie Flager Jr in Myra Breckenridge; Gerald Lucas in Airport '77; Van Johnson in Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles; and Mr Pettis in Shampoo, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.

On television Furth appeared over the years in dozens of staples, such as Ironside; Bonanza; Happy Days; All in the Family; LA Law; and Murder, She Wrote. In The Scarlett O'Hara War, a film made for television, he portrayed the film director George Cukor.

George Furth was born George Schweinfurth in Chicago on December 14 1932.

Having studied drama at Northwestern University and Columbia, he made his debut as an actor on Broadway in 1961 with a role in the play A Cook for Mr General. Two years later he appeared in the musical Hot Spot, and in 1964 he had his first role on the big screen, in Gore Vidal's political drama The Best Man alongside Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson.

As a playwright, Furth brought several productions to Broadway, the most notable of which was Twigs (1971), a comedy centred around four women, all members of the same family and all played by Sada Thompson, whose performance won her a Tony for best actress.

Other of Furth's plays performed on Broadway were The Supporting Cast (1981), a comedy, and Precious Sons (1986), a more serious drama drawing on the examples of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller.

Neither of these was successful, although the latter elicited a measure of critical interest. Furth also wrote the book for the John Kander-Fred Ebb musical The Act (1977), which starred Liza Minnelli.